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Nearly three decades after the Hillsborough disaster, reporter Peter Marshall - who was there on the day 96 people died - examines new evidence behind some of the shocking headlines and stories that smeared the Liverpool fans in 1989.

In a special edition, this documentary in the Exposure strand also investigates concerns about how survivors, witnesses and their testimony were treated.

Call for police to investigate evidence given by ex-Premier League boss Sir Dave Richards about behaviour of Liverpool fans

The scene at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989.
The scene at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989. Photograph: PA

David Conn

Saturday 10 December 2016 20.05 GMT

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Serious doubts have been cast over the evidence about the Hillsborough disaster given in a statement by the former Premier League chairman, Sir Dave Richards, which included a notorious allegation against some Liverpool supporters.

Trevor Hicks, whose two teenage daughters, Sarah and Vicki, were among the 96 people unlawfully killed at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, has called for Richards’s evidence to be investigated by Operation Resolve, the current police investigation into the disaster.

Analysis of Richards’s evidence, together with new research casting doubt on other allegations made against Liverpool supporters by South Yorkshire police, are included in a documentary, Hillsborough: Smears, Survivors and the Search for the Truth, to be shown on ITV on Monday night (10.40pm). Richards was at Hillsborough – Sheffield Wednesday’s home ground – as a spectator and went on to the pitch with a doctor, Christopher Rigby, who tried to save several victims of the lethal crush, including three young men who died.

In his statement, Richards said that they also attended to a woman who died and that some Liverpool supporters made an obscene remark about her. “There were some lads behind the perimeter fence who shouted to us to throw her to them,” his statement said. “They made comments like: ‘Throw her in here, we’ll *********** fix her up.’ There were 10 or 12 of them. I was shocked by this and stood there.”

That alleged episode was similar to another allegation that spectators made a lewd remark about a female victim, which was one of the stories told by South Yorkshire officers that were published in the Sun on 19 April 1989. That edition, which carried the front-page headline “The Truth”, caused great distress to bereaved families and survivors and led to a boycott of the newspaper on Merseyside.

Hillsborough disaster: deadly mistakes and lies that lasted decades

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Along with other police allegations of misbehaviour now proved to have been untrue, the S*n reported: “A gang of Liverpool fans noticed that the blouse of a girl trampled to death had risen above her breasts. As a policeman struggled in vain to revive her, the mob jeered: ‘Throw her up here and we will **** her.’ ”

In October 2014 at the new inquests, a former South Yorkshire police inspector, Gordon Sykes, acknowledged that he had been the original source of that story. Michael Mansfield QC, representing 75 families whose relatives died, accused Sykes of having lied and made it up. Sykes maintained that it had happened, then Fiona Barton QC, representing South Yorkshire police, advanced Richards’s statement and read it out in court, as corroboration for the story alleged by Sykes.

Richards, a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday at the time of the disaster, became the club’s chairman soon after and then, in 2000, chairman of the Premier League, a role he held until he stepped down, aged of 70, in 2013.

Analysis of his statement has now revealed discrepancies in the detail with known facts about the disaster. Rigby himself did not say he had attended to any women on the pitch, but Richards gave a detailed description – that the woman was aged between 27 and 30, wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a multicoloured skirt, and that Rigby had told him she was dead.

Seven female victims were among the 96 people who died at Hillsborough and none was wearing a skirt. All were wearing jeans or trousers.

Richards’s statement described Rigby pulling the skirt down and checking for a pulse in the woman’s groin, but Rigby said he checked for a pulse in necks and wrists and it was “unlikely” he would check the groin area. The doctor did not mention hearing any such obscene remark during his and Richards’s time attending to people on the pitch. Richards was never called as a witness to the inquests and he has not responded either to ITV’s or the Observer’s questions about these discrepancies.

Doubt has also been cast on the evidence of another witness to the alleged obscene remark, who claimed to have been told of it by other Liverpool supporters. The witness, Cherry Daniels, told this story to West Midlands police, who were appointed to investigate the disaster in 1989, but her statement did not disclose that she was in fact the daughter of a South Yorkshire police officer, Chief Inspector David Sumner, who was Sykes’s superior in the force.

Daniels did not respond to the Observer’s questions about this but did reply to ITV. She said that she did tell West Midlands police at the time, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2014, that she was Sumner’s daughter, but these investigators had said it was not relevant and not included it in her statement. The IPCC has told the Observer, however, that it has found no evidence that Daniels disclosed she was Sumner’s daughter.

The statement of another witness, Anthony Garratty, a steward at Hillsborough who attended to many people who died or were injured, also included that he overheard a lewd remark from Liverpool supporters. Interviewed for the documentary, Garratty said that he never related such a story and believed West Midlands police officers must have inserted it. The IPCC has said that it is investigating similar allegations by survivors of the disaster, that West Midlands police officers altered their statements, failed to reflect what they had said, or put improper pressure on them.

These witnesses now include Ray Lewis, who was the referee for the semi-final, which he abandoned at 3.06pm when he was alerted to the crisis in the Leppings Lane end. Lewis’s handwritten statement includes the observation that: “I saw some spectators walking in good humour. They were mixed.” In the typed version, which Lewis said he did not see until the current IPCC investigation 25 years later, the word “mixed” is changed, and the sentence reads: “They were p----d.” Lewis has told the programme that he believes this was clearly changed by West Midlands police and should be investigated. The West Midlands force is not commenting on any detail while investigations continue.

The programme also casts doubt on another story told against Liverpool supporters, which was included as an accepted fact by Lord Justice Taylor in his August 1989 report into the cause of the disaster: that a police horse was burned by cigarettes. A South Yorkshire police constable, David Scott, faced no disciplinary action for striking out at Liverpool supporters caught in the crush outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles, partly because it was accepted that his horse had been burned with a cigarette. One of the UK’s most senior veterinary consultants, Prof Derek Knottenbelt, of the Equine Hospital at the University of Liverpool, has viewed the footage of Scott on his horse and concluded from the horse’s lack of severe reaction that it cannot have been burned in the manner described. Although Scott said he had informed his senior officer, Insp Paul Hand-Davies, in fact Hand-Davies never mentioned a horse being burned and told South Yorkshire police’s own press office at the time that it had not happened.

Scott declined to answer questions from the Observer.

The bereaved families and survivors argued that stories of drunkenness, obscenity and other alleged misbehaviour by supporters at the match were smears put out by South Yorkshire police to avoid responsibility for their failings which caused the lethal crush, and shift blame on to the victims. The jury at the new inquests determined in April this year that the 96 people were unlawfully killed due to gross negligence by the South Yorkshire police officer in command, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, that there were several other serious police failings,and that no behaviour by supporters contributed to the dangerous situation.

Hicks told the Observer: “I believe that the reliability of Sir Dave Richards’s evidence about this alleged incident should now be investigated by Operation Resolve. The smears found their way into the S*n so that the police could deflect responsibility and blame innocent supporters and Richards’s evidence was advanced at the inquests to support one of those stories.”

Some research for the ITV programme was originally carried out by people who as teenagers survived the crush at Hillsborough and are now applying professional skills in the search for the truth.

Interesting stuff, I'm not sure I want to tune in though, I feel like a voyeur into someone elses tragedy if you get me and I've seen all I need to see as a supporter of the club.

This is more about the smears and slurs on the survivors after rather than the disaster itself.

I like you thought I'd seen and heard it all regarding Hillsborough... Turns out I hadn't.

For example: One witness statement that backed up the police's account had her name redacted. It was only revealed when the inquests were nearly over, she was the daughter of one of the officers there who was a close colleague of the officer behind the smears in the s*n.

This is more about the smears and slurs on the survivors after rather than the disaster itself.

I like you thought I'd seen and heard it all regarding Hillsborough... Turns out I hadn't.

For example: One witness statement that backed up the police's account had her name redacted. It was only revealed when the inquests were nearly over, she was the daughter of one of the officers there who was a close colleague of the officer behind the smears in the s*n.